Author Interview: JJ DiBenedetto

The Paranormal Romance Guild is proud to present an interview with PRG Premium Membership Author

JJ DIBENEDETTO

Please tell us a little bit about yourself

By day I work in marketing, and by night I’m an author with ten novels published so far and number eleven on the way the end of this month.

I live in the Washington, DC area with my beautiful wife and our cat, who’s clearly in charge of the household.

What were your inspirations for writing or becoming an author?

I’ve always written, but I decided to try and publish a book three years ago, after a friend sold her first novel. I said, “why not me, too?” and dusted off the first draft of what would become DREAM STUDENT, rewrote it from page one, and then I self-published.

Tell us about your Book(s)/Series(s).

So far, I’ve for the Dream Series, which is ten paranormal romance novels all about Sara, a woman who can step into other people’s dreams. It sounds like a gift, but for Sara it’s more of a curse, because she keeps getting drawn into mysteries and problems only she can solve. She visits the dreams of a serial killer, which makes her the only witness, and the only one who can stop him. When one of her professors falls ill, she begins visiting the dreams of his colleagues, who all want him dead, and she has to figure out which one might be poisoning him before they’re successful. And so it goes.

But the books also follow Sara’s more ordinary life – she goes from being a single, shy college girl to a fiancée, then a wife and a mother; and from an undergraduate to a medical student to a practicing doctor.

Why did you write it?

I initially came up with the idea just by asking the question – why do people in mystery stories try to solve crimes themselves, when any normal person would just go to the police, tell them what they know, and let them deal with it. My answer was, what if the evidence was all in your head, because you saw it through the eyes of the criminals in their dreams? Sara, and her family and the college setting of the first book, all came about together with that answer.

Once I finished rewriting the first book, I had a lot of momentum still, and I had an obvious place to go – follow Sara to medical school. And each book sprang from the previous one the same way.

Why should people buy it?

The books have something for everyone. There’s romance, suspense, mysteries, humor and lots of heart, and it’s all tied together with the supernatural element of the dreams.